Rebar producers seek trade case delay

NEW YORK  The Rebar Trade Action Coalition has asked the U.S. Commerce Department to extend by 50 days its deadline for preliminary anti-dumping duty determinations in a trade case against steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey and Mexico, according to a Jan. 27 filing with Commerces Enforcement and Compliance division.

Commerce is scheduled to announce its preliminary anti-dumping duty determinations Feb. 27, but the trade group has asked that they be pushed back to April 18.

"A 50-day extension will provide Commerce with the time needed to review respondents submissions and to request supplemental information and corrected data as necessary so that the preliminary determinations will reflect the most accurate results possible," Alan Price, John Shane and Jeffery Frank of Wiley Rein LLP, Washington, counsel to the Rebar Trade Action Coalition, wrote in the filing. "The additional time is necessary in light of the fact that many of the respondents are still submitting initial responses to Commerces questionnaire and several of the responses already received contain substantial deficiencies."

The International Trade Commission made a preliminary ruling in November that imports of rebar from Turkey and Mexico had materially injured or threatened to injure U.S. rebar producers (amm.com, Nov. 1).

U.S. rebar producers filed their trade complaint in September, alleging that imports of rebar from Turkey and Mexico were being sold at less than fair value and that imports from Turkey were subsidized (amm.com, Sept. 4)